Legislature races to finish, to Democrats’ chagrin

Gov. Bill Haslam will release his budget amendment next week, an annual rite that usually signals the beginning of the end of the legislative session.

But not everyone at the Capitol is happy with Republicans’ plan to adjourn before the end of April, a stated goal of the GOP leadership since lawmakers convened in mid-January. Democrats say the rush to finish has resulted in some slapdash lawmaking.

“In the Senate, it seems to me that at least once a week we’ve got to send a bill back to committee, or we’ve got to adopt an amendment on the floor to fix some error,” Senate Democratic Caucus Chairman Lowe Finney, D-Jackson, said last week. “That used to be a rare thing. That is becoming commonplace now, which tells me these bills are moving through the committee system much too quickly, without full discussion.

“We’re going to wake up in another year that the TEAM Act (Haslam’s civil service bill) or another piece of legislation had some error in it that we’ve got to come back and fix. I hope we don’t but I’m afraid that’s where we’re going.”